Rasul Gamzatov

IN AKHVAKH

To my friend Musa Magomedov

Let us go where girls entrance us —
To Akhvakh return!
Are we handsome? Our advances
Shall they greet or spurn?

We’ll observe the age-old rite,
Setting hearts aglow.
Through a maiden’s window wide
Furry caps we’ll throw.

We’ll discover straightaway
Who the favourite is:
From her window back shall come
Every cap but his.

Palest moonlight I recall…
Silent streets below,
Where we argued life and love
All so long ago!

Barely grown to manhood then
I was never shy
In the company of men
Older then than I.

That spring night I found myself
Near a house, all set
To display the forwardness
I do not regret.

Plane trees murmured like the surf.
In an upper room
Was the girl whose song we heard…
Palely shone the moon.

Of the sun and stars she sang
And about her lover,
Urging him to hasten lest
She should find another.

As I felt my knees collapse
And my senses spin,
My companions doffed their caps
And sent them flying in.

This could easily be done,
So my courage grew:
Hard upon a furry one
My cloth cap I threw.

How my pounding heart did leap,
My breathing quicken, when
Caps came hurtling back, like sheep
Escaping from a pen!

When my cap with broken peak —
A duck with broken wing —
Hit the dust, I could not speak
Nor think of anything.

The girl, however, pitied me:
«You’ve come too soon, my dear!
But wait awhile» (she gaily smiled),
«Come back another year!»

I departed, broken-hearted,
And in anguish wept.
From the roof the favoured one
Through her window crept.

Many freezing winters passed,
Many summers burned
Hill and field, before at last
Thither I returned.

Mountain maids… How would I fare?
Would I catch their eye?
Of the other suitors there,
None was as old as I.

As before, a pale moon beamed
On the roof-tops flat
And the selfsame girl, it seemed,
At the window eat.

When the men their fur caps threw
In hope her love to share,
I sent my own hat sailing through
The open window there.

Some young suitors mourned their lack
Of luck and stood nonplussed
When their caps came sailing back,
Raising clouds of dust.

Like a crow, that’s shot first go,
So short-lived its fate,
My broad hat flew out and skimmed
To the very gate.

Once again I heard the girl
Break off her merry song:
«You should have come earlier!
Where have you been so long!»

All was as before — the sky
And stars the same… except
It was a younger man than I
That through her window crept.

So all my life I seek the boon
Of love. But cruel Fate
Decrees I either come too soon
Or else arrive too late.

Translated by Peter Tempest